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great-uncle, the Prince Ilvaine, intends coming in for the festival, and another uncle and several cousins will be with him. Although some other of my cousins,” he added lazily, “will be coming by way of Emaln and Sirith.”
    Jehane Mor felt Tarathan’s attention sharpen, but she said nothing, careful to hold her thoughts as still as her face. Haimyr smiled, watching the play of light through the golden glass. “But I did not invite you here to speak of my family. How long has it been, exactly, since we last met? Five years? Six?”
    “Over five, since we waited by the Border Mark,” Jehane Mor replied quietly.
    The minstrel looked at her, his eyes lambent. “And they never came,” he said. “I know this because the Earl’s agents followed you all the way to Terebanth to be sure you really had returned alone. He was, I regret to say, sadly suspicious of you both. It was not until the following spring that we knew for certain that Malian and her party had turned aside, becoming lost in the winter that fell on Jaransor.”
    “Jaransor,” Jehane Mor repeated, shaking her head. “That information never made its way to the River, or to the Guild. I am grieved to learn it now. Such news makes ill hearing.”
    The minstrel was still watching her face, but now he shrugged. “It is a long road from the Wall to the River, almost as great a distance, in its way, as the fabled journey from Ij to Ishnapur—which is quite the end of the world, would you not say?”
    “Not entirely,” Tarathan replied. “But I do not think you invited us here to talk of the distance between lands.”
    “I suppose it is all in the way one looks at things,” Haimyr mused. “Perhaps heralds, who are always traveling the world, think less of distance than those who live more settled lives. But where was I? Ah!” He snapped his long fingers together. “News from the Wall: that was it. But I am forgetting my manners. We have poured the wine and made our libation to Seruth. Now we must be seated and comfortable in our talk.”
    Jehane Mor smiled slightly and moved to a high-backed chair, while Tarathan remained standing behind her.
    “How many years have you dwelt on the Wall of Night?” she asked.
    Haimyr threw up a hand. “Over twenty now, since I first met the young Lord Tasarion and accepted his offer to see the Derai Wall. And there I have remained. Fate is a curious thing, is it not?”
    “It is,” Jehane Mor agreed. “But I don’t think you asked us here to speak of that either. News from the Wall, you said, and that Lady Malian was lost in Jaransor. That seems a very strange road for any Derai to have taken.”
    Haimyr shrugged. “I think she and her companions were driven there, out of the Gray Lands. Night’s trackers found evidence of that before full winter fell across the plain. But the snow came earlier in Jaransor, overtaking Malian and her party—as it overtook us all,” he added musingly. “Even on the Wall there had never been a winter so long or so hard. Lannorth and a hundred-squad were bailed up for months in Westwind Hold, waiting for the spring before entering Jaransor.”
    “The Derai sent numbers into Jaransor?” Jehane Mor could hear the frown in Tarathan’s voice.
    The minstrel shook his head. “In the end, no. The Commander of Westwind forbade it, so only Lannorth and a handpicked few went in, with the best of the hold’s hunters and scouts.”
    “Wise,” Tarathan said shortly.
    “As you say,” Haimyr agreed. “The shamans of the Winter country believe that the gods walked Jaransor once, in the very dawn of time, and that their memory dwells there still.” He took another sip of the wine. “Ijiri lore, too, suggests that it is a place of ancient power, not to be ventured lightly.”
    “Jaransor-of the-many-legends,” said Jehane Mor. She paused before speaking again, conscious of advancing the next pawn across an invisible board. “What did they find, the handpicked few?”
    “Dead